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06 April 2015

Attack of the Crohn's...again!

There was a distinct sense of deja vu this week as I found myself staring down the barrel of another Crohn's flare-up almost a year to the day since the last one.

It's so frustrating when I'd actually been feeling so good mentally and physically lately. Mark and I had been deliberately eating healthy the past six or seven weeks, and I'd been exercising way more with longer runs and faster runs. I'd started doing Tower Pilates and was feeling stronger and more flexible with less muscle niggles than I had in ages.

But unbeknownst to me, this must have been bubbling away in the background waiting to pounce. Over the past couple of weeks, it'd been gradually ramping up but with a lot of other things that had been going on I'd been successfully managing to ignore it.

Then on Wednesday, we got some life-changing news. And all the planning and waiting to hear had obviously been causing me to internalise way more stress than I had ever imagined. The relief of hearing this news was clearly the last straw and my body just literally crashed to the ground straight afterward. Luckily that afternoon, I got hold of my specialist and upped my medication back to full strength and also got onto doing some samples for the lab which take almost two weeks to come back with results for how active the Crohn's is in my body to determine whether just increasing the dosage will be enough.

On Thursday morning I was not in much of a fit state for anything, but I did manage to drop the samples into the lab at 7am, grab my laptop from work and head home to work from bed for the rest of the day.

This guy always seems to know when you're ill and was my constant companion all day

I was meant to be finishing packing for our 10-day road trip to Gisborne, the East Cape and Ohope that afternoon, but it was just an effort to even be vertical and walking around the house. I managed to put in an extra burst of effort for an hour or so before crashing on the couch - full body wiped out - and to the point where we really questioned whether we could even go ahead with the trip - with at least 7 hours of driving ahead and with regular waves of tummy cramps hitting me, I wasn't sure how I would cope.

Good Friday dawned and with it my resolution that the show would go on, and I would brave the journey. We got on the road just before 9am, me armed with a hot water bottle and a resolve that this silly disease was not going to get the better of me. It was a very long day as we didn't arrive in Gisborne till nearly 6pm, but the best part of the day by far was the stop at Morere Hot Springs - my tummy just loved the warmth of the plunge pools and I didn't want to get out!

When we arrived in Gisborne, Mark and Noah headed out to get takeaways and after eating dinner I fell asleep on the couch straight afterward for 2 hours - boy I must have needed that!

So here we are, another day down on Saturday, and think that little by little things are on the improve. We got out of the house today for a good chunk of the day - and while I only watched the boys energetically playing beach cricket and boogy boarding, I could at least enjoy the sea air and sunshine and feel a part of the holiday.

So far, the biggest frustration has been that I'm finding myself physically incapable of doing the location photo shoots I'd lined up for this trip... not helped by the fact the clocks are going back tonight either and I physically just cannot get out of bed that early - mornings and evenings are when I feel at my worst, but I'm hoping as each day goes by I will keep improving with less cramps and more strength, so I may yet get some golden opportunities before the holiday ends .... here's hoping!